The Staff in Correctional Settings

Abstract

Staff members in correctional institutions are caught between the demands of the administrative subculture and the inmate subculture. As part of a larger project, data were gathered on the perceptions and attitudes of administrative personnel, staff personnel, and inmates toward "restricted" boys-youths judged potentially harmful to themselves or others and labeled as such -within one juvenile correctional setting. Official directives in dicated that the administration discriminated between the re stricted youth and the other boys and regarded their restrictive labels as valid. The boys themselves generally displayed no such discrimination and evaluated the restricted boys as being no different in behavior or attitudes from the other boys in the institution. Responses by the staff personnel indicated that they, in agreement with the boys, saw no differences in behavior or attitudes between restricted and nonrestricted youths. Yet these same staff personnel indicated that they regarded the label at tached to the restricted boys as accurate and valid, thus agreeing with the administration evaluation. It was suggested that the necessity for staff to reconcile these apparently irreconcilable attitudes produces a set of values and norms unique to the staff, containing situational definitions and meanings related to both the administrative and inmate cultures, yet beyond evaluation or understanding solely in terms of either one.